"I was told: a plane en route from Ukraine to Istanbul was seized, captors demand landing in Sochi," Mr Putin says in the film, Reuters reported.

The pilots of a Turkish Pegasus Airlines Boeing 737-800, flying from Kharkiv to Istanbul with 110 people on board, said a passenger had a bomb and had told them to divert the plane to Sochi, reporter Andrey Kondrashov says.

In the film, Mr Putin says security officials told him that the emergency procedure in such a situation was to down the plane.

"I told them: act according to the plan," Mr Putin says.

Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
Mr Putin says he ordered the plane to be shot down shortly before the Sochi opening ceremony

Minutes later he received another call informing him that it was a false alarm, he says.

He arrived at the Olympic venue in Sochi with Olympic officials shortly afterwards, he says.

The first part of the documentary, entitled Putin, has been posted on social media accounts, including one belonging to key state media manager and commentator Dmitry Kiselyov, and a pro-Kremlin YouTube account.

Incredulity at Crimea question

During the film Mr Putin was asked by interviewer Mr Kondrashov - a top state TV presenter and currently Mr Putin's election campaign press secretary - if there were any circumstances in which he could envisage returning Crimea to Ukraine.

Dose of admiration

This two-hour hagiography is part of that. It seems crafted to fill Russians with admiration and ensure they head out to vote. The film presents Vladimir Putin as strong and focussed. But he's caring, too, filmed with lots of big close-ups, cheeky smiles and hints of emotion.

The key lines, though, come at the very start: the idea that the West will never put Russia in its place, Crimea will never be returned and Russia's president is not someone to be messed with.

There's also a stress on his appeal to the young, via adoring interviews with teenagers born on the day he came to power. As for the handling of the 2000 Kursk submarine tragedy, Putin is now cast as decisive and humane - far from the harsh image he projected at the time when he smirked at a question on the fate of the Kursk, and said "it sank".

But at the heart of it all is a story of how a strongman hero 'saved' a country from ruin. In that, it underlines how Putin inherited a military in tatters and developed a force that Russians can be proud of, and the world has to reckon with once again.